Bill, the Galactic Hero

Chapter One

Bill never realised that sex was the
cause of it all. If the sun that morning had not been burning so
warmly in the brassy sky of Phigerinadon II, and if he had not
glimpsed the sugar-white and barrel-wide backside of Inga-Maria
Calyphigia while she bathed in the stream, he might have paid more
attention to his ploughing than to the burning pressures of
heterosexuality, and would have driven his furrow to the far side of
the hill before the seductive music sounded along the road. He might
never have heard it and his life would have been very, very
different. But he did hear it and dropped the handles of the plough
that was plugged into the robomule, turned and gaped.

It was indeed a fabulous sight.
Leading the parade was a one-robot band, twelve feet high and
splendid in its great black busby that concealed the hi-fi speakers.
The golden pillars of its legs stamped forward as its thirty
articulated arms sawed, plucked and fingered at a dazzling variety of
instruments. Martial music poured out in wave after inspiring wave
and even Bill's thick peasant feet stirred in their clodhoppers as
the shining boots of the squad of soldiers crashed along the road in
perfect unison. Medals jingled on the manly swell of their
scarlet-clad chests and there could certainly be no nobler sight in
all the world. To their rear marched the sergeant, gorgeous in his
braid and brass, thickly clustered medals and ribbons, sword and gun,
girdled gut and steely eye which sought out Bill where he stood
gawking over the fence. The grizzled head nodded in his direction.
the steel-trap mouth bent into a friendly smile and there was a
conspiratorial wink. Then the little legion was past, and hurrying
behind in their wake came a huddle of dust-covered ancillary robots,
hopping and crawling or rippling along on treads. As soon as these
had gone by Bill climbed clumsily over the split-rail fence and ran
after them. There were no more than two interesting events every four
years here, and he was not going to miss what promised to be a third.

A crowd had already gathered in the
market square when Bill hurried up, and they were listening to an
enthusiastic band concert. The robot hurled itself into the glorious
measures of Star Troopers to the Skies Avaunt, and thrashed its way
through Rockets Rumble and almost demolished itself in the tumultuous
rhythm of Sappers at the Pithead Digging. It pursued this last
tune so strenuously that one of its legs flew off, rising high into
the air, but was caught dextrously before it could hit the ground and
the music ended with the robot balancing on its remaining leg beating
time with the detached limb. It also, after an ear-fracturing peal on
the brasses, used the leg to point across the square to where a
tri-di screen and refreshment booth had been set up. The troopers had
vanished into the tavern and the recruiting sergeant stood alone
among his robots, beaming a welcoming smile.

"Now hear this! Free drinks for all,
courtesy of the Emperor, and some lively scenes of jolly adventure in
distant climes to amuse you while you sip," he called in an immense
and leathery voice.

Most of the people drifted over, Bill
in their midst, though a few embittered and elderly draft-dodgers
slunk away between the houses. Cooling drinks were shared out by a
robot with a spigot for a navel and an inexhaustible supply of
plastic glasses in one hip. Bill sipped his happily while he followed
the enthralling adventures of the space troopers in full colour with
sound effects and stimulating subsonics. There was battle and death
and glory though it was only the Chingers who died: troopers only
suffered neat little wounds in their extremities that could be
covered easily by small bandages. And while Bill was enjoying this,
Recruiting Sergeant Grue was enjoying him, his little piggy eyes
ruddy with greed as they fastened on to the back of Bill's neck.

This is the one! he chortled to
himself while, unknowingly, his yellowed tongue licked at his lips.
He could already feel the weight of the bonus money in his pocket.
The rest of the audience were the usual mixed bag of overage men, fat
women, beardless youths and other unenlistables. All except this
broad-shouldered, square-chinned, curly-haired chunk of electronic
cannon-fodder. With a precise hand on the controls the sergeant
lowered the background subsonics and aimed a tight-beam stimulator at
the back of his victim's head. Bill writhed in his seat, almost
taking part in the glorious battle unfolding before him.

As the last chord died and the screen
went blank the refreshment robot pounded hollowly on its metallic
chest and bellowed DRINK! DRINK! DRINK! The sheeplike audience swept
that way, all except Bill who was plucked from their midst by a
powerful arm.

"Here, I saved some for you," the
sergeant said, passing over a prepared cup so loaded with dissolved
ego-reducing drugs that they were crystalising out at the bottom.
"You're a fine figure of a lad and to my eye seem a cut above the
yokels here. Did you ever think of making your career in the
forces?"

"I'm not the military type,
shargeant..." Bill chomped his jaws and spat to remove the impediment
to his speech, and puzzled at the sudden fogginess in his thoughts.
Though it was a tribute to his physique that he was even conscious
after the volume of drugs and sonics that he had been plied with.
"Not the military type. My fondest ambition is to be of help in the
best way I can, in my chosen career as a Technical Fertiliser
Operator and I'm almost finished with my correspondence course..."

"That's a crappy job for a bright lad
like you," the sergeant said while clapping him on the arm to get a
good feel of his biceps. Rock. He resisted the impulse to pull Bill's
lip down and take a quick peek at the condition of his back teeth.
Later. "Leave that kind of job to those that like it. No chance of
promotion. While a career in the troopers has no top. Why
Grand-Admiral Pflunger came up through the rocket tubes, as they say,
from Recruit Trooper to Grand-Admiral. How does that sound?"

"Not before you've seen this, just as
a favour to me of course," the sergeant said, cutting in front of him
and pointing to a large book hold open by a tiny robot. "Clothes make
the man and most men would be ashamed to be seen in a crummy looking
smock like that thing draped around you or wearing those broken
canalboats on their feet. Why look like that when you
can look like this?"

Bill's eyes followed the thick finger
to the colour plate in the book where a miracle of misapplied
engineering caused his own face to appear on the illustrated figure
dressed in trooper-red. The sergeant flipped the pages and on each
plate the uniform was a little more gaudy, the rank higher. The last
one was that of a Grand-Admiral and Bill blinked at his own face
under the plumed helmet, now with a touch of crowfeet about the eyes
and sporting a handsome and grey-shot moustache, but still undeniably
his own.

"That's the way you will look," the
sergeant murmured into his ear, "once you have climbed the ladder of
success. Would you like to try a uniform on. Tailor!"

When Bill opened his mouth to protest
the sergeant put a large cigar into it, and before he could get it
out the robot tailor had rolled up, swept a curtain bearing arm about
him and stripped him naked. "Hey! Hey... !" he said.

"It won't hurt," the sergeant said,
poking his great head through the curtain and beaming at Bill's
muscled form. He poked a finger into a pectoral (rock) then withdrew.

"Ouch!" Bill said as the tailor
extruded a cold pointer and jabbed him with it, measuring his size.
Something went chunk deep
inside its tubular torso and a brilliant red jacket began to emerge
from a slot in the front. In an instant this was slipped on to Bill
and the shining gold buttons buttoned. Luxurious grey moleskin
trousers were pulled on next, then gleaming black knee-length boots.
Bill staggered a bit as the curtain was whipped away and a powered
full-length mirror rolled up.

"Oh how the girls love a uniform,"
the sergeant said, "and I can't blame them."

A memory of the vision of Inga-Maria
Calyphigia's matched white moons obscured Bill's sight for a moment,
and when it had cleared he found he was grasping a stylo and was
about to sign the form that the recruiting sergeant held before him.

"And not only will you receive this
lovely uniform, an enlistment bonus and a free medical examination,
but you will he awarded these handsome medals." The sergeant took a
flat box, offered to him on cue by a robot, and opened it to display
a glittering array of ribbons and bangles. "This is the Honourable
Enlistment Award," he intoned gravely, pinning a jewel-encrusted
nebula, pendant on chartreuse, to Bill's wide chest. "And the
Emperor's Congratulatory Gilded Horn, the Forward to Victory
Starburst, the Praise Be Given Salutation of the Mothers of the
Victorious Fallen and the Everflowing Cornucopia which does not mean
anything but it looks nice and can be used to carry contraceptives."
He stepped back and admired Bill's chest which was now adangle with
ribbons, shining metal and gleaning paste gems.

"I just couldn't," Bill said. "Thank you anyway for the offer, but..."

The sergeant smiled, prepared even
for this eleventh hour resistance, and pressed the button on his belt
that actuated the programmed hypno-coil in the heel of Bill's new
boot. The powerful neural current surged through the contacts and
Bill's hand twitched and jumped, and when the momentary fog had
lifted from his eyes he saw that he had signed his name.

"But..."

"Welcome to the Space Troopers," the
sergeant boomed, smacking him on the back (trapezium like rock) and
relieving him of the stylo. "FALL IN!" in a larger voice, and the
recruits stumbled from the tavern.

"What have they done to my son!"
Bill's mother screeched, coming into the market square, clutching at
her bosom with one hand and towing his baby brother Charlie with the
other. Charlie began to cry and wet his pants.

"Your son is now a trooper for the
greater glory of the Emperor," the sergeant said, pushing his
slack-jawed and round-shouldered recruit squad into line.

"Mother..." Bill said, but the sergeant shoved him back into the ranks.

"Be brave, madam," he said. "There
can be no greater glory for a mother." He dropped a large and newly
minted coin into her hand. "Here is the enlistment bonus, the
Emperor's shilling, I know he wants you to have it.
ATTENTION!"

With a clash of heels the graceless
recruits braced their shoulders and lifted their chins. Much to his
surprise, so did Bill.

"RIGHT TURN!"

In a single, graceful motion they
turned as the command robot replayed the order to the hypno-coil in
every boot. FORWARD MARCH! And they did in perfect rhythm, so well
under control that, try as hard as he could, Bill could neither turn
his head nor wave a last goodbye to his mother. She vanished behind
him and one last anguished wail cut through the thud of marching
feet.

"Step up the count to 130," the
sergeant ordered, glancing at the watch set under the nail of his
little finger. "Just ten miles to the station and we'll be in camp
tonight, my lads."

The command robot moved its metronome
up one notch and the tramping boots conformed to the smarter pace and
the men began to sweat. By the time they had reached the copter
station it was nearly dark, their red paper uniforms hung in shreds,
the gilt had been rubbed from their pot metal buttons and the surface
charge that repelled the dust from their thin plastic boots had
leaked away. They looked as ragged, weary, dusty and miserable as
they felt.

Chapter Two

It wasn't the recorded bugle playing
reveille that woke Bill, but the supersonics that streamed through
the metal frame of his bunk that shook him until the fillings
vibrated from his teeth. He sprang to his feet and stood there
shivering in the grey of dawn. Because it was summer the floor was
refrigerated: no mollycoddling of the men in Camp Leon Trotsky. The
pallid, chilled figures of the other recruits loomed up on every
side, and when the soul-shaking vibrations had died away they dragged
their thick sackcloth and sandpaper fatigue uniforms from their
bunks, pulled them hastily on, jammed their feet into the great
purple recruit boots and staggered out into the dawn.

"I am here to break your spirit," a
voice, rich with menace, told them, and they looked up and shivered
even more as they faced the chief demon in this particular hell.

Art: Harry Harrison (New Worlds, August 1965)

Petty Chief Officer Deathwish Drang
was a specialist from the tips of the angry spikes of his hair to the
corrugated stamping-soles of his mirror-like boots. He was wide
shouldered and lean hipped, while his long arms hung curved like some
horrible anthropoid, the knuckles of his immense fists scarred from
the breaking of thousands of teeth. It was impossible to look at this
detestable form and imagine that it issued from the tender womb of a
woman. He could never have been born; he must have been built to
order by the government. Most terrible of all was the head. The face!
The hairline was scarcely a finger's-width above the black tangle of
the brows that were set like a rank growth of foliage at the rim of
the black pits that concealed the eyes - visible only as baleful red
gleams in the stygian darkness. A nose broken and crushed, squatted
above the mouth that was like a knife slash in the taut belly of a
corpse, while from between the lips issued the great, white fangs of
the canine teeth, at least two inches long, that rested in grooves on
the lower lip.

"I am Petty Chief Officer Deathwish
Drang and you will call me 'Sir' or 'M'lord'." He began to pace
grimly before the row of terrified recruits. "I am your father and
your mother and your whole universe and your dedicated enemy, and
very soon I will have you regretting the day you were born. I will
crush your will. When I say frog you will jump. My job is to turn you
into troopers, and troopers have discipline. Discipline means simply
unthinking subservience, loss of free will, absolute obedience. That
is all I ask..."

He stopped before Bill. who was not
shaking quite as much as the others, and scowled.

"I don't like your face. One month of Sunday KP."

"Sir..."

"And a second month for talking back."

He waited, but Bill was silent. He
had already learned his first lesson on how to he a good trooper.
Keep your mouth shut. Deathwish paced on.

"Right now you are nothing but
horrible, sordid, flabby pieces of debased civilian flesh. I shall
turn that flesh into muscle, your wills to jelly, your minds to
machines. You will become good troopers or I will kill you. Very soon
you will be hearing stories about me, vicious stories about how I
killed and ate a recruit who disobeyed me."

He halted and stared at them, and
slowly the coffin-lid lips parted in an evil travesty of a grin,
while a drop of saliva formed at the tip of each whitened tusk.

"That story is true."

A moan broke from the row of recruits
and they shook as though a chill wind had passed over them. The smile
vanished.

"We will run to breakfast now as soon
as I have some volunteers for an easy assignment. Can any of you
drive a helicar?"

Two recruits hopefully raised their
hands and he beckoned them forward. "All right, both of you, mops and
buckets behind that door. Clean out the latrine while the rest are
eating. You'll have a better appetite for lunch."

That was Bill's second lesson on how to be a good trooper: never volunteer.

The days of recruit training passed
with a horribly lethargic speed. With each day conditions became
worse and Bill's exhaustion greater. This seemed impossible, but it
was nevertheless true. A large number of gifted and sadistic minds
had designed it to be that way. The recruits' heads were shaved for
uniformity and their genitalia painted with orange antiseptic to
control the endemic crotch crickets. The food was theoretically
nourishing but incredibly vile and when, by mistake, one batch of
meat was served in an edible state it was caught at the last moment
and thrown out and the cook reduced two grades. Their sleep was
broken by mock gas attacks and their free time filled with caring for
their equipment. The seventh day was designated as a day of rest but
they all had received punishments, like Bill's KP, and it was as any
other day. On this, the third Sunday of their imprisonment, they were
stumbling through the last hour of the day before the lights were
extinguished and they were finally permitted to crawl into their I
casehardened bunks. Bill pushed against the weak force field that
blocked the door, cunningly designed to allow the desert flies to
enter but not leave the barracks, and dragged himself in. After
fourteen hours of KP his legs vibrated with exhaustion and his arms
were wrinkled and pallid as a corpse's from the soapy water. He
dropped his jacket to the floor, where it stood stiffly supported by
its burden of sweat, grease and dust, and dragged his shaver from his
footlocker. In the latrine he bobbed his head around trying to find a
clear space in one of the mirrors. All of them had been heavily
stencilled in large letters with such inspiring messages as KEEP YOUR
WUG SHUT - THE CHINGERS ARE LISTENING and IF YOU TALK, THIS MAN MAY
DIE. He finally plugged the shaver in next to WOULD YOU WANT YOUR
SISTER TO MARRY ONE? and centred his face in the O in ONE.
Black-rimmed and bloodshot eyes stared back at him as he ran the
buzzing machine over the underweight planes of his jaw. It took more
than a minute for the meaning of the question to penetrate his
fatigue-drugged brain.,

"I haven't got a sister," he grumbled
peevishly. "And if I did why should she want to marry a lizard
anyway?" It was a rhetorical question but it brought an answer from
the far end of the room, from the last shot tower in the second row.

"It doesn't mean exactly what it says - it's just there to make us
hate the dirty enemy more."

Bill jumped, he had thought he was
alone in the latrine, and the razor buzzed spitefully and gouged a
bit of flesh from his lip.

"Who's there? Why are you hiding?" he
snarled, then recognized the huddled dark figure and the many pairs
of boots. "Oh, it's only you Eager." His anger drained away and he
turned back to the mirror.

Eager Beager was so much a part of
the latrine that you forgot he was there. A moon-faced, eternally
smiling youth whose apple red cheeks never lost their glow, and whose
smile looked so much out of place here in Camp Leon Trotsky that
everyone wanted to kill him until they remembered that he was mad. He
had to be mad because he was always eager to help his buddies and had
volunteered as permanent latrine orderly. Not only that, but he liked
to polish boots and had offered to do those of one after another of
his buddies until now he did the boots for every man in the squad
every night. Whenever they were in the barracks Eager Beager could be
found crouched at the end of the thrones that were his personal
domain, surrounded by the heaps of shoes and polishing industriously,
his face wreathed in smiles. He would still be there after lights
out, working by the light of a burning wick stuck in a can of polish,
and was usually up before the others in the morning, finishing his
voluntary job and still smiling. Sometimes, when the boots were very
dirty, he worked right through the night. The kid was obviously
insane but no one turned him in because he did such a good job on the
boots and they all prayed that he wouldn't die of exhaustion until
recruit training was finished.

"Well if that's what they want to
say, why don't they just say Hate the dirty enemy more?" Bill
complained. He jerked his thumb at the far wall where there was a
poster labelled KNOW THE ENEMY. It featured a life-size illustration
of a Chinger, a seven foot high saurian that looked very much like a
scale-covered, four-armed, green kangaroo with an alligator's head.
"Whose sister would want to marry a thing like that anyway? And what
would a thing like that want to do with a sister, except maybe eat her?"

Eager put a last buff on a purple toe
and picked up another boot. He frowned for a brief instant to show
what a serious thought this was. "Well you see, gee - it doesn't mean
a - sister. It's just part of psychological warfare. We have to win
the war. To win the war we have to fight hard. In order to fight hard
we have to have good soldiers. Good soldiers have to hate the enemy.
That's the way it goes. The Chingers are the only non-human race that
has been discovered in the galaxy that has gone beyond the aboriginal
level, so naturally we have to wipe them out."

"What the hell do you mean naturally? I don't want to wipe anyone
out. I just want to go home and be a Technical Fertilizer Operator."

"Well I don't mean you personally, of
course - gee!" Eager opened a fresh can of polish with purple-stained
hands and dug his fingers into it. "I mean the human race, that's
just the way we do things. If we don't wipe them out they'll wipe us
out. Of course they say that war is against their religion and they
will only fight in defence, and they have never made any attacks yet.
But we can't believe them even though it is true. They might change
their religion or their minds some day and then where would we be?
The best answer is to wipe them out now."

Bill unplugged his razor and washed
his face in the tepid, rusty water. "It still doesn't seem to make
sense. All right, so the sister I don't have doesn't marry one of
them. But how about that - " he pointed to the stencilling on the
duck-boards, KEEP THIS SHOWER CLEAR - THE ENEMY CAN HEAR. "Or that -
" The sign above the urinal that read BUTTON FLIES - BEWARE SPIES.
"Forgetting for the moment we don't have any secrets here worth
travelling a mile to hear, much less twenty-five light years - how
could a Chinger possibly be a spy? What kind of make-up would
disguise a seven foot lizard as a recruit? You couldn't even disguise
one to look like Deathwish Drang, though you could get pretty close -"

The lights went out and, as though using his name had summoned him like
a devil from the pit, the voice of Deathwish blasted through the barracks.

Bill stumbled away through the
darkness of the barracks where the only illumination was the red glow
from Deathwish's eyes. He fell asleep the instant his head touched
his carborundum pillow and it seemed that only a moment had elapsed
before reveille sent him hurtling from his bunk. At breakfast, while
he was painfully cutting his coffee-substitute into chunks small
enough to swallow, the telenews reported heavy fighting in the Beta
Lyra sector with mounting losses. A groan rippled through the mess
hall when this was announced, not because of any excess of
patriotism, but because any bad news would only make things worse for
them. They did not know how this would be arranged, but they were
positive it would be. They were right. Since the morning was a bit
cooler than usual the Monday parade was postponed until noon when the
ferroconcrete drill ground would have warmed up nicely and there
would be the maximum number of heat prostration cases. But this was
just the beginning. From where Bill stood at attention near the rear
he could see that the air-conditioning canopy was up on the reviewing
stand. That meant brass. The trigger guard of his atomic rifle dug a
hole into his shoulder and a drop of sweat collected then dripped
from the tip of his nose. Out of the corners of his eyes he could see
the steady ripple of motion as men collapsed here and there, among
the massed ranks of thousands, and were dragged to the waiting
ambulances by alert corpsmen. Here they were laid in the shade of the
vehicles until they revived and could be urged back to their
positions in the formation.

Then the band burst into SPACEMEN HO
AND CHINGERS VANQUISHED! and the broadcast signal to each boot heel
snapped the ranks to attention at the same instant and the thousands
of rifles flashed in the sun. The commanding general's staff car -
this was obvious from the two stars painted on it - pulled up beside
the reviewing stand and a tiny, round figure moved quickly through
the furnacelike air to the comfort of the enclosure. Bill had never
seen him any closer than this, at least from the front, though once
while he was returning from late KP he had spotted the general
getting into his car near the camp theatre. At least Bill thought it
was he, but all he had seen was a brief rear view. Therefore, if he
had a mental picture of the general, it was of a large backside
superimposed on a teeny antlike figure. He thought of most officers
in these general terms, since the men of course had nothing to do
with officers during their recruit training. Bill had had a good
glimpse of a 2nd lieutenant once, near the orderly room, and he knew
he had a face. And there had been a medical officer who hadn't been
more than thirty yards away, who had lectured them on venereal
disease, but Bill had been lucky enough to sit behind a post and had
promptly fallen asleep.

After the band shut up, the anti-G
loudspeakers floated out over the troops and the general addressed
them. He had nothing to say that anyone cared to listen to and he
closed with the announcement that because of losses in the field
their training programme would be accelerated, which was just what
they had expected. Then the band played some more and they marched
back to the barracks, changed into their haircloth fatigues and
marched - double time now - to the range where they fired their
atomic rifles at plastic replicas of Chingers that popped up out of
holes in the ground. Their aim was very bad until Deathwish Drang
popped out of a hole and every trooper switched to full automatic and
hit with every charge fired from every gun, which is a very hard
thing to do. Then the smoke cleared and they stopped cheering and
started sobbing when they saw that it was only a plastic replica of
Deathwish now torn to tiny pieces, and the original appeared behind
them and gnashed its tusks and gave them all a full month's KP.

"The human body is a wonderful
thing," Bowb Brown said a month later when they were sitting around a
table in the Lowest Ranks Klub eating plastic-skinned sausages
stuffed with road sweepings and drinking watery warm beer. Bowb Brown
was a thoat herder from the plains, which is why they called him Bowb
since everyone knows just what thoat-herders do with their thoats. He
was tall, thin and bowlegged, his skin burnt to the colour of ancient
leather. He rarely talked, being more used to the eternal silence of
the plains broken only by the eerie cry of the restless thoat, but he
was a great thinker since the one thing he had plenty of was time to
think in. He could worry a thought for days, even weeks, before he
mentioned it aloud, and while he was thinking about it nothing could
disturb him. He even let them I call him Bowb without protesting:
call any other trooper Bowb and he would hit you in the face. Bill
and Eager and the other troopers from X squad sitting around the
table all clapped and cheered, as they always did when Bowb said
something.

"Tell us more, Bowb!"

"It can still talk - I thought it was dead!"

"Go on - why is the body a wonderful thing?"

They waited in expectant silence
while Bowb managed to tear a bite from his sausage and, after
ineffectual chewing, swallowed it with an effort that brought tears
to his eyes. He eased the pain with a mouthful of beer and spoke.

"The human body is a wonderful thing because if it doesn't die it lives."

They waited for more until they realized that he was finished,
then they sneered.

"Boy, are you full of bowb!"

"Sign up for OCS!"

"Yeah - but what does it mean?"

Bill knew what it meant, but didn't
tell them. There were only half as many men in the squad as there had
been the first day. One man had been transferred, but all the others
were in the hospital, or in the mental hospital, or discharged for
the convenience of the government as being too crippled for active
service. Or dead. The survivors, after losing every ounce of weight
not made up of bone or essential connective tissue, had put back the
lost weight in the form of muscle and were now completely adapted to
the rigours of Camp Leon Trotsky, though they still loathed it. Bill
marvelled at the efficiency of the system. Civilians had to fool
around with examinations, grades, retirement benefits, seniority and
a thousand other factors that limited the efficiency of the workers.
But how easily the troopers did it! They simply killed off the weaker
ones and used the survivors. He respected the system. Though he still
loathed it.

"You know what I need, I need a woman," Ugly Ugglesway said.

"Don't talk dirty," Bill told him promptly, since he had been correctly
brought up.

"I'm not talking dirty!" Ugly whined. "It's not like I said I wanted to
re-enlist or that I thought Deathwish was human or anything like that. I
just said I need a woman. Don't we all ?"

"I need a drink," Bowb Brown said as he took a long swig from his glass of
dehydrated reconstituted beer, shuddered, then squirted it out through his
teeth in a long stream on to the concrete, where it instantly evaporated.

"Affirm, affirm," Ugly agreed, bobbing his mat-haired warty head up and
down. "I need a woman and a drink." His whine became almost plaintive.
"After all, what else is there to want in the troopers outside of out?"

They thought about that a long time,
but could think of nothing else that anyone really wanted. Eager
Beager looked out from under the table where he was surreptitiously
polishing a boot and said that he wanted more polish, but they
ignored him. Even Bill, now that he put his mind to it, could think
of nothing he really wanted other than this inextricably linked pair.
He tried hard to think of something else, since he had vague memories
of wanting other things when he had been a civilian, but nothing else
came to mind.

"Gee, it's only seven weeks more
until we get our first pass," Eager said from under the table, then
screamed a little as everyone kicked him at once.

But slow as subjective time crawled
by, the objective clocks were still operating and the seven weeks did
pass by and eliminate themselves one by one. Busy weeks filled with
all the essential recruit training courses: bayonet drill, small-arms
training, short-arm inspection, greypfing, orientation lectures,
drill, communal singing and the Articles of War. These last were read
with dreadful regularity twice a week and were absolute torture
because of the intense somnolence they brought on. At the first
rustle of the scratchy, monotonous voice from the tape player heads
would begin to nod. But every seat in the auditorium was wired with
an EEG that monitored the brain waves of the captive troopers. As
soon as the shape of the Alpha wave indicated transition from
consciousness to slumber a powerful jolt of current would be shot
into the dozing buttocks, jabbing the owner painfully awake. The
musty auditorium was a dimly lit torture chamber, filled with the
droning dull voice punctuated by the sharp screams of the
electrified, the sea of nod ding heads abob here and there with
painfully leaping figures.

No one ever listened to the terrible
executions and sentences announced in the Articles for the most
innocent of crimes. Everyone knew that they had signed away all human
rights when they enlisted, and the itemising of what they had lost
interested them not in the slightest. What they really were
interested in was counting the hours until they would receive their
first pass. The ritual by which this reward was begrudgingly given
was unusually humiliating, but they expected this and merely lowered
their eyes and shuffled forward in the line, ready to sacrifice any
remaining shards of their self-respect in exchange for the crimpled
scrap of plastic. This rite finished, there was a scramble for the
monorail train whose track ran on electrically charged pillars,
soaring over the thirty-foot-high barbed wire, crossing the quicksand
beds, then dropping into the little farming town of Leyville.

At least it had been an agricultural
town before Camp Leon Trotsky had been built and sporadically, in the
hours when the troopers weren't on leave, it followed its original
agrarian bent. The rest of the time the grain and feed stores shut
down and the drink and knocking shops opened. Many times the same
premises were used for both functions. A lever would be pulled when
the first of the leave party thundered out of the station and the
grain bins became beds, sales clerks pimps, cashiers retained their
same function - though the prices went up - while the counters would
be racked with glasses to serve as bars. It was to one of these
establishments, a mortuary-cum-saloon, that Bill and his friends went.

"What'll it be, boys?" the
ever-smiling owner of the Final Resting Bar and Grill asked.

"Double shot of Embalming Fluid." Bowb Brown told him.

"No jokes," the landlord said, the
smile vanishing for a second as he took down a bottle on which the
garish label REAL WHISKY had been pasted over the etched-in EMBALMING
FLUID. "Any trouble I call the MPs." The smile returned as money
struck the counter. "Name your poison, gents."

They sat around a long, narrow table
as thick as it was wide with brass handles on both sides, and let the
blessed relief of ethyl alcohol trickle a path down their dust-lined
throats.

"I never drank before I came into the service," Bill said, draining four
fingers neat of Old Kidney Killer, and held his glass out for more.

"You never had to," Ugly said, pouring.

"That's for sure," Bowb Brown said,
smacking his lips with relish and raising a bottle to his lips again.

"Gee," Eager Beager said, sipping
hesitantly at the edge of his glass. "It tastes like a tincture of
sugar, wood chips, various esters and a number of higher alcohols."

"Drink up," Bowb said incoherently
around the neck of the bottle. "All them things is good for you."

"Now I want a woman," Ugly said and
there was a rush as they all jammed in the door trying to get out at
the same time, until someone shouted Look! and they turned to see
Eager still sitting at the table.

"Woman!" Ugly said enthusiastically, in the tone of voice you say Dinner!
when you are calling a dog. The knot of men stirred in the doorway and
stamped their feet. Eager didn't move.

"Gee - I think I'll stay right here,"
he said, his smile simpler than ever. "But you guys run along."

"Don't you feel well, Eager?"

"Feel fine."

"Ain't you reached puberty?"

"Gee..."

"What you gonna do here?"

Eager reached under the table and dragged out a canvas grip. He opened it
to show them that it was packed with great, purple boots. "I thought I'd
catch up on my polishing."

They walked slowly down the wooden sidewalk, silent for the moment. "I wonder
if there is something wrong with Eager?" Bill asked, but no one answered him.
They were looking down the rutted street, at a brilliantly illuminated sign
that cast a tempting ruddy glow.

SPACEMEN'S REST it said. CONTINUOUS
STRIP SHOW and BEST DRINKS and better PRIVATE ROOMS FOR GUESTS AND
THEIR FRIENDS. They walked faster. The front wall of the Spacemen's
Rest was covered with shatter-proof glass cases filled with tri-di
pix of the fully dressed (bangle and double stars) entertainers, and
farther in with pix of them nude (debangled with fallen stars). Bill
stayed the quick sound of panting by pointing to a small sign almost
lost among the tumescent wealth of mammaries.

OFFICERS ONLY it read.

"Move along," an MP grated and poked
at them with his electronic nightstick. They shuffled on.

The next establishment admitted men
of all classes, but the cover charge was 77 credits, more than they
all had between them. After that the OFFICERS ONLY began again until
the pavement ended and all the lights were behind them.

"What's that?" Ugly asked at the
sound of murmured voices from a nearby darkened street, and peering
closely they saw a line of troopers that stretched out of sight
around a distant corner.

"What's this?" he asked the last man in the line.

"Lower ranks cathouse. And don't try
to buck the line, bowb. On the back, on the back."

They joined up instantly and Bill
ended up last, but not for long. They shuffled forward slowly and
other troopers appeared and queued up behind him. The night was cool
and he took many life-preserving slugs from his bottle. There was
little conversation and what there was died as the red-lit portal
loomed ever closer. It opened and closed at regular intervals and one
by one Bill's buddies slipped in. Then it was his turn and the door
started to open and he started to step forward and the sirens started
to scream and a large MP with a great fat belly jumped between Bill
and the door.

"Emergency recall. Back to the base
you men!" it barked. Bill howled a strangled groan of frustration and
leaped forward, but a light tap with the electronic nightstick sent
him reeling back with the others. He was carried along, half stunned,
with the shuffling wave of bodies while the sirens moaned and the
artificial northern lights in the sky spelled out TO ARMS!!!! in
letters of flame each a hundred miles long. Someone put his hand out,
holding Bill up as he started to slide under the trampling purple
boots. It was his old buddy, Ugly, carrying a satiated smirk and he
hated him and tried to hit him. But before he could raise his fist
they were swept into a monorail car, hurled through the night and
disgorged back in Camp Leon Trotsky. He forgot his anger when the
gnarled claws of Deathwish Drang dragged him from the crowd.

"Pack your bags," he rasped, "you're shipping out."

"They can't do that to us - we haven't finished our training."

"They can do whatever they want, and
they usually do. A glorious space battle has just been fought to its
victorious conclusion and there are over four million casualties,
give or take a hundred thousand. Replacements are needed, which is
you. Prepare to board the transports immediately if not sooner."

"We can't - we have no space gear! The supply room..."

"All of the supply personnel have already been shipped out."

"Food..."

"The cooks and KP pushers are already
spacebound. This is an emergency. All unessential personnel are being
sent out. Probably to die." He twanged a tusk coyly and washed them
with his loathsome grin. "While I remain here in peaceful security to
train your replacements." The delivery tube plunked at his elbow and
as he opened the message capsule and read its contents his smile
slowly fell to pieces. "They're shipping me out too," he said
hollowly.